Bruins’ Ference regains his footing

Boston’s veteran defenseman played Tuesday night after missing more than two months with a fractured tibia. He thinks it’ll be easier to get up to speed with a screw holding the bone together than it was to play last year with a weak knee.

By Mike Loftus

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Mike Loftus

Posted Jan. 28, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jan 28, 2009 at 9:15 AM

By Mike Loftus

Posted Jan. 28, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jan 28, 2009 at 9:15 AM

BOSTON

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Andrew Ference’s return to game action Tuesday night may not have attracted the same attention as the comebacks of Patrice Bergeron or Milan Lucic, but Ference didn’t mind.

“You’ll accept as many bodies back as possible,” said Ference, the defenseman whose tibia was fractured in a Nov. 13 game against Montreal. “I think guys have shown we can play well without certain guys in the lineup, but it always helps to have numbers, to have guys like (Bergeron and Lucic) back.”

Ference found similarities in his return and that of Bergeron from his second concussion in as many seasons: As Bergeron felt he’d get up to game speed quicker than he did after his first, more serious concussion, Ference thought he’d be closer to fully functional than last year, when he competed in the playoffs before knee ligament damage had healed.

“I’ll take a broken bone over a knee ligament any day,” Ference said. “Once this is healed, it’s healed. With the knee, it took until summer to feel 100 percent. Obviously, now it’s good, but it’s very difficult to come back from that kind of injury and feel normal. I mean, you can play, but you definitely don’t feel normal.”

Ference, his tibia now held together by a surgically-implanted screw, seemed on the verge of return about three weeks ago. Coach Claude Julien revealed Tuesday that Ference sustained a “totally different type of injury” in the last practice before what proved to be an aborted comeback; Ference said someone fell on his foot, hurting some muscles.

Ference took 22 shifts for 18:43, down from the 22:25 he averaged before getting hurt.

Bitz a hit

The fight itself wasn’t especially memorable, but rookie winger Byron Bitz will never forget the opponent in his first NHL fight: Bitz tangled in the third period with Donald Brashear, who carried 2,525 career penalty minutes into his 970th NHL game.

“I think I did all right,” said Bitz, who hadn’t taken a penalty in his first six games. “I was pretty happy with how I did.”

Bitz got most of his punches in early, before Brashear freed an arm to land some shots late. Bitz said he was “not really” aware of who he’d squared off with at first, but the rest of the Bruins did.

His team may have been 2-0 against Boston and 0-1 against the NHL co-leading San Jose Sharks before Tuesday, but Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau knew which opponent he thought was better.

“(The Bruins) are the best team in the league that I’ve seen,” said Boudreau, who was inducted into the American Hockey League Hall of Fame during last weekend’s All-Star festivities in Worcester. “They have no weaknesses.”

Page 2 of 2 - Boudreau won’t concede the Eastern Conference title to the B’s but admitted it’ll be hard for his Southeast Division leaders to make up an 11-point gap.